Mephi's Adventures with Snake Tubs

[Mephibosheth1]

Greetings!!

So, I've kinda sold my parents on the idea of a snake rack to house Mycroft (and some other snakes in the future). That being said, I figured I should make a "dump thread" for the story of my escapades in trying to build this. So, I guess this is post 1 of my adventure.

My mother wants to buy one from eBay, but the type she's looking at only has 2 enclosures, and is a stand-alone cabinet type with PCV innards. I'm wanting to go for the more traditional rack system made of melamine, and powered by Flexwatt and a Herpstat. If I'm going to convince my parents about this type of rack, I need to know some about how difficult it would be to make myself (you should have seen the look on my mom's face when I told her I would make it myself).

So, some questions:

1) The location I have selected for this rack is an old entertainment center that has a large cubby for a CRT television. That large cubby measures 15" deep, 31" high, and 41" long. With a space that size, how large will each cubby in the rack be?? I've never built something like this, so I'm not sure how big each tub will need to be (I'm only keeping BPs in the rack).

2) What equipment will I need for working with the melamine?? I have a friend who can probably take care of any fine tuning of the sizes with a table saw, but are there special tools for drilling the pilot holes, etc??

3) How much Flexwatt will be required?? What is the best way to run the Flexwatt (one continuous section running from shelf-to-shelf) or individual strips on each shelf?? Does Flexwatt come with instructions on how to wire it?? And are those instructions useable for connecting the Flexwatt to a Herpstat??


I think these are all the questions I have for now…Thanks for the help